The commanding officer of Massachusetts National Air Guardsman Jack Teixeira has been relieved of his post. Teixeira is alleged to be responsible for leaking dozens of top-secret Pentagon documents that proved to be embarrassing for the White House.
Col. Sean Riley, commander of the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts, was removed from his position after the Pentagon conducted an investigation into the Disord Leaks. The report found Riley should have raised the alarm after he was informed Teixeira was seeking information that was outside of the scope of his position.
Airmen working night duty, like Teixeira, “had ample opportunity to access [classified] sites and print a high volume of products without supervision or detection,” the report said. “The preponderance of the evidence shows three individuals in A1C Teixeira’s supervisory chain had information about as many as four separate instances of security incidents and potential insider threat indicators they were required to report.”
It continued, “Had any of these three members come forward and properly disclosed the information they held at the time of the incidents, the length and depth of the unauthorized disclosures may have been reduced by several months.”
Riley was among 15 soldiers who received some form of discipline over the Teixeira leaks.
Teixeira’s job “requires system access to perform system maintenance, but [does] not require access to intelligence content or products to maintain the system,” the report said. “Evidence indicates a lack of understanding of the need-to-know concept due to inconsistent guidance on the topic.”
In April, top secret documents painting the Western proxy war against Russia in a negative light began surfacing online. Prosecutors, seeking to convict Teixeira under the Espionage Act, have said the air guardsman began posting the documents in a private discord server – named “ThugShakerCentral” – in December 2022. However, the Pentagon report now says Tiexeiria could have started posting the documents in January 2022.
One of the documents released by Teixeira was an intelligence assessment that predicted that Ukraine would fall “well short” of its goals in the counteroffensive. American officials attempted to downplay those findings in May before Kiev launched a counteroffensive the following month.
As the assessment predicted, Ukraine failed to come anywhere near achieving its goals in the counteroffensive. Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers died in the offensive maneuvers. Kiev also lost a huge percentage of its military equipment by following the advice of Western officials to commit significant forces in an offensive against entrenched Russian defensive lines and massive minefields.
